Cultural Artifacts Speak to Sharp-Elbowed Thatcher Era

LONDON—In February, two months before Margaret Thatcher died, an armor-plated bus built for one of her 1980s tours of Northern Ireland was sold at auction.

Weighing in at 28 metric tons, the so-called "battle bus" has a bomb-proof body, its own generator and air supply and the capacity to withstand chemical, biological or nuclear attack, according to the auction house's managing director, Jonathan Humbert. Those specs were deemed necessary for her visit to the troubled province, he says, because Mrs. Thatcher...